by Deck Deckert
The Yyuran Series
(Swans - April 10, 2006) "I see your actor Charlie Sheen doesn't believe the official reports about 911," my Martian friend Yyuran said. "He wants a new investigation."
I snorted. "He's not MY actor. And anyway, what does he know? Is he one of those conspiracy nuts who thinks George Bush had something to do with it?"
"He didn't say, but he thinks the real conspiracy theory is the government's."
"What are you talking about?" I was a little exasperated. Yyuran is a great guy, but it seems that the longer he is on Earth, the less he is able to understand us.
"Nineteen amateurs who were trained by a guy in a cave in Afghanistan used box cutters to take over and fly four commercial airliners?"
"They took lessons over here," I said.
"And flew them into three buildings?"
"What's so hard about that? It wasn't like hitting a moving target."
"The plane that hit the Pentagon had to descend 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes, make a 270 degree turn at 500 miles an hour, and skim across treetops the last 500 yards."
"Well, yeah. So?"
"Very good flying, for an amateur," he said, and laughed. A Martian laugh sounds like a pig being slaughtered by a chain saw. I'll never get used to it.
"And then there is the problem of the collapsing World Trade Center buildings," he added.
"Where is the problem there? Two big planes with lots of aviation fuel aboard made a hell of a bang and a very hot fire," I said.
"Not hot enough to melt the steel beams that hold up skyscrapers."
"I suppose Charlie said that. What's he now, a structural engineer, as well as an actor?"
"No, but several engineers have said that, including physics professor Stephen Jones. He suggests that the Trade Center buildings were brought down by explosives, controlled demolition."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous," I said, rather heatedly, I admit. He gets under my skin sometimes with his negativity.
"The plane didn't hit with enough force, and jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel. Fires have never taken down a skyscraper before -- or since. And you lost three in one day?"
"That's all been explained," I said. "The top floors were weakened by the fires and plane crashes. They fell, and the weight of them brought down the lower floors, one after another."
"They fell at free-fall speed, and fell straight down, not toppling to the side at all, even the third building, the one that wasn't hit by a plane," he said. "That is not possible. Not unless there were controlled explosives. And you can see evidence of that in the videotapes of the buildings collapse."
"I suppose you're an engineer too," I said, somewhat sarcastically.
"You have to be a pretty good engineer to fly a spaceship," he said. I had meant it as an insult but he had apparently taken it as a compliment.
"Well, anyway, there's no way a bunch of terrorists could have set explosives in all those buildings."
"Exactly."
"Oh, so now you're back to claiming conspiracies. Who are you blaming now? The Bush administration?"
He shrugged, a Martian shrug that makes his body look like a corkscrew. "We won't know if there is not a real investigation. There are a lot of other unanswered questions."
"What else?" I asked resignedly.
"Why did John Ashcroft and top Pentagon officials cancel plans to fly commercial airliners the morning of 9-11?"
"Who knows, there could be a lot of innocent explanations."
"Who made all the millions of dollars selling short United and American Airlines stock just before 9-11? Seems like somebody knew something was going to happen that day."
"People sell stock short all the time," I said.
"Why haven't the tapes that showed the plane approaching the Pentagon from a gas station, a hotel, the freeway, been released?"
"National security."
"Where were the jet fighters which are supposed to protect your skies? Why didn't they intercept the hijacked airliners?"
"They were on training missions," I said.
"What were the explosions that several witnesses, firefighters, and janitors, heard before the buildings collapsed?"
"A building on fire makes a lot of noise," I said. "It could have been anything."
Yyuran just laughed.
"How could molten steel be found in the wreckage weeks later? That had to have come from explosives."
"I don't know all the answers. But the idea of some kind of conspiracy is simply ridiculous."
"The buildings just collapsed?"
"Yes."
"The odds against that have been calculated at a trillion to one."
"Whatever," I said.
Is Yyuran up to something? Help finance his further investigations.